What matters for something to cause significant change to the status quo in the food system?

FIT4FOOD2030 consortium members explored last Thursday what incentives, driving forces, actors, etc. may be instrumental in changing the food system. Using specific examples, different groups focused on scenarios such as:

Goal: 50% of food products come from AQIculture by 2030

AQIculture includes practices such as vertical farming, hydroponics, agroecology, permaculture, urban farming, advanced fish farms and new feeds. AQIculture has a lower impact on the environment, creates organic awareness and comprises new approaches to fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics and leads to less intensive land and water use.

The question then was:

What needs to happen from a social, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal and human values perspective for a breakthrough in the food system to be achieved which would allow us to reach the above-mentioned goal?

Discussion on what social, technological and other elements can be used to bring about change

Key partners identified were both traditional farmers in conventional agriculture that needed to modernise, as well as ‘new farmers’ that are exploring in non-traditional farming practices. Driving forces included the current demand on land use, subsidies for the newer farming practices supported by favourable regulation and bringing retailers on board to allow the distribution of different grown or types of products.

One key outcome of the discussions was:

The ideal is not to deconstruct the EU food system to bring about change. We want co-adaptation to get the best from conventional practices & niche practices across the whole food system.

Food system transformation with current system merging with niche practices.

So, what next?

The partners are now working to consolidate the learnings from the workshop to identify those factors that can help drive a breakthrough in the food system. The results will then be formally presented to the Policy and City Labs as well as the EU Think Tank, to assess the opportunities in consciously using these drivers for food system change.

If you want to know more about our current breakthrough work, have a look at the breakthrough collection that will be assessed for driver, incentive and key actor identification here.